Tag: Bruce Campbell

Five young people go to a cabin in the middle of the countryside. Once there, things start to get weird. Once they discover a book bound in human flesh, things become worse. Lethally so.

The Evil Dead series has always over-delivered. The big question going into the 2013 version is whether it’ll be able to do the same. Thankfully, it does. It’s a big ludicrous rollercoaster ride, which has all the signs of a big hit.

As stupid movies go, it’s very smart. It takes the original movie and gives it a far more solid grounding, with far more believable character motivations. Why are they in the middle of nowhere? Because one of their group is trying to give up heroin. Why don’t they believe her when she undergoes insane experiences in the woods? Because she’s trying to give up heroin, and is likely to be lying, self-harming or delusionary.

It also uses the demonic book to good effect, by using it to show you exactly what’s going to happen to certain characters, which means that you start anticipating it more when you watch it. This gives a different tone than the all-too-common ‘jump shots’. They’re still there, obviously, but the variety is nice.

Also, it isn’t a straight remake. There’s an intentional feeling with this that these experiences have happened to people here before, much as there was in the original. “You will die, like the other before you”. Very smartly, there’s no Ash in this film. There’s a character that could be like Ash, but the simple fact that they’re not recasting the most central character in the franchise means that all bets are off when it comes to the well-being of any of the characters.

A certain scene involving trees (which will be familiar to fans of the original) is there, but it feels less gratuitous and more justified in terms of plot development. Also, there’s an extra element involved that means that, while it’s still unpleasant, it isn’t quite as unpleasant to women as the original was. The original scene feels somewhat leering, which this one mostly avoids, which is a definite improvement.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t problems. There are major problems with it, but the overall enthusiasm of the movie means that they’re not the issue they would otherwise be.

The most obvious one is that the cast are fairly dislikeable for the most part. In the original film, the characters were less well-defined, but there was the definite idea that they liked and cared about each other. Also, there’s the point that Bruce Campbell is a difficult person to recast. He carries an innate likeability and trustworthiness, combined with a manic energy, that none of the cast in this film are able to replicate, which means that there’s a lot of heart missing from the movie.

This Evil Dead Review was originally written for the UK cinema release in March 2013

There’s the issue that for quite a lot of The Evil Dead, it appears that the central message of the film is “women: not useful in a crisis!”. Thankfully, this doesn’t end up being as bad as it appears, but there are long stretches where this seemed to be the case, which made for uncomfortable viewing. Rewatching the original, this is more of an issue there, but it makes a lot of the new version awkward at times.

It’s extremely well shot, and learning that there was an intentional attempt to use as little CGI as possible makes it all the more impressive. The sound is also an important aspect, as it is with most horror films, and it’s very well handled here (interestingly, Bruce Campbell was involved with the sound, primarily in finding sound to use from the original film).

It’s an astoundingly assured feature debut from Director Fede Alvarez, and he’s done particularly well in updating a well-loved film.

The amount of gore and sheer exhuberation in displaying it means that this is going to be fairly heavy going for a lot of audiences, but I think this is going to lead to it being more popular amongst audiences. It’s the first horror film in quite a long time that I could see people talking about in a ‘you’ve got to see this’ sense.

Overall, it navigates its flaws and challenges with flair, and delivers a wildly entertaining horror movie, if not as likeable as the original.

There are some films which are considered cult classics. And then there are some cult classics that are considered all-time greats. And then there are some all-time greats which are considered the perfect example of their type. Evil Dead 2 (Dead by Dawn) sits comfortably in this final category, and with this fantastic new restored BD edition you can finally enjoy it in all its glory.

The first Evil Dead film was a fantastic piece of low-budget, early-entry film-making by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, but everyone agrees that it was far from perfect. What it did was to spawn a whole new genre of horror cinema (the cabin in the woods) and show that gross-out horror and frat-house humour can sit side by side successfully.

When it came to the second film, the director and star choose to do a kind of re-boot…take what was great about the first film, but apply new film-making techniques and experience. They set out to upgrade, upscale and generally out-do their previous outing. And boy did they manage it?!

Starting with a brief review of the first film (re-filmed since they couldn’t get the rights to use their own movie!) we meet Ash and his girlfriend, enjoying some study-time hanky panky in a cabin in the deep dark woods. Unfortunately, Ash plays a recording of the previous owner (a professor) reading out the incantations from the dreaded Book of the Dead (the Necronomicon). This awakens a dark spirit that dwells in the woods, which possesses Ash’s girlfriend who he is forced to kill by beheading her. Here the new film begins, as Ash is forced to confront the various evil forces lurking within and without the cabin, a mixture of pure body horror and psychological attack. Meanwhile a new foursome are making their way to the cabin, the professor’s daughter and her boyfriend, plus two handy local hicks to show them the secret route through the forest. By the time they have arrived, poor Ash has been put through hell by the evil spirits, forced to cut his own hand off with a chainsaw and is pretty much a raving lunatic. With all five of them holed up in the cabin, it isn’t long before they are being picked off, one by one. There are attacks by forest demons (including the now infamous tree-rape scene), a cellar-dwelling granny deadite and by a possessed Ash. As each one dies (only to become a deadite themselves) Ash must learn from the Necronomicon how to send the spirits back where they came from.

This is a stunning piece of Blu-ray restoration and upscaling. The film has never looked so crisp and clean. Apart from the opening rehash of the first scene, which appears to be purposefully grainy, the rest of the movie is spotless. And in a film with this much spectacle, gross-out blood and gore, psychedelic imagery and OTT horrors, the restoration needed to be superb. The soundtrack has an equally stunning impact, with scenes such as the forest-demon attack and the Ash-goes-mad section having particular audio heft. It is a great session for your surround sound system. All in all, this is THE definitive way to watch Evil Dead II, and you won’t be left wanting.

Evil Dead II Blu Ray Extras

Also on the BD release are some great extras. There is a 1.5hr long making of documentary which is one of the finest examples of BD extras I have ever watched. It is split into sections which you can jump through, and covers every aspect of the film from early days, through production, to post production and the film’s continuing impact. It stars all the main players, with Bruce Campbell leading the way. The only notable name missing is Sam Raimi, which is a shame. Possibly too busy making Oz, or just too far removed from his early films…he is eulogised extensively and features in old footage, but it would have been nice to have even just a few minutes of him from the present day. This is one seriously interesting feature and gives you real value for money. There is a far shorter second feature looking at the original locations of the film. Sounds a bit dull, but it is far from being so. The director locates the original cabin in the woods (it’s still there!) as well as the old school gym where they built the interiors. As a fan it is a very pleasing extra.

Evil Dead II gets a 5/5 from me as a perfect BD package. One of the all-time greatest genre-defining films, restored and upscaled to perfection with a stunning soundtrack and a wallet-pleasing set of extras. If you are a fan, go buy this now. But be warned, watch it late at night and you could end up being “Dead by dawnnnnnn!!!!”

Just ahead of the theatrical release of the new EVIL DEAD movie (reviewed here) it is fantastic to see that a special edition of EVIL DEAD II on Blu-ray will be released. From horror master Sam Raimi (err THE EVIL DEAD, and other things like Drag Me To Hell) and starring the effervescent Bruce Campbell (Brisco County Jr), this Blu-ray edition contains great EVIL DEAD 2 special features new to the UK!

After the shocking and notorious cult classic EVIL DEAD impaled its way into the minds of a whole generation by becoming one of the original ‘video nasties’, visionary, maverick director Sam Raimi decided to elaborate on its twisted scenario by creating one of the most visually deranged and psychotically demented horror movies to ever splatter its way across cinema screens. Featuring b-movie legend Bruce Campbell in his most iconic role, as the fantastically unhinged Ash, EVIL DEAD II is a gore-fuelled, splatstick masterpiece.

One of the most notable things about this sequel is the fact it is actually a complete movie in itself. The reprise of the original movies events were filmed especially for this film. This is why many people think of Evil Dead 2 as a remake rather than a sequel (those people are wrong).

Ash, (Bruce Campbell reprising his role from the original EVIL DEAD), takes his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler: Evil Dead 2) to a secluded cabin in the woods where he plays back a professor’s tape recorded recitation of passages from the Book of the Dead. The spell calls up an evil force from the woods that turns Linda into a monstrous Deadite, andthreatens to do the same to Ash. He is forced to single-handedly battle thelegions of the damned as the most lethal – and groovy – hero in horror movie history.

Bruce Campbell Interviewed ragarding the DVD / Blu Ray release of My Name Is Bruce. Interview was performed 3rd February 2009 In London

Bruce Campbell On Politics and The President:

I think it?s the best thing that?s happened in eight years. I hope we can get back to a little more of a balanced world. I think it?s huge and frankly I?m astounded that it actually happened, that it wasn?t somehow? he won with enough margin though? That Gore thing, with Al Gore when the Supreme Court stepped in? That was one of the creepiest things I?ve ever experienced. You go, ?Wait, so this is a democracy, right?? Perhaps not. So, yeah, I?m feeling pretty damn good, pretty hopeful. I don?t even care if he screws up. He?ll screw up way less than his predecessor. How could you not? It was unbelievable. What kills me is that Clinton gets a blowjob in the White House. ?Oh my God. Oh my God.? And then the other president, who?s responsible for thousands of deaths, what happens to him? Nothing. No impeachment. But God forbid you should have sex, because in America sex is bad, violence is good. It?s also true in cinema. You can?t kiss a nipple but you can cut it off with a pair of scissors. There?s something way wrong.

Bruce Campbell on just who came up with the idea

Yeah, they (Mark Verheiden, scriptwriter and Mike Richardson, producer) pitched it. I had been casually familiar with those guys for years, but they are old pals of each other. They go way back to high school, I think. They did The Mask together. They did Timecop together. So, they pitched it and I jumped all over it. Then we developed it together from there.

Q: Had you worked with them before?

Bruce Campbell: Only on the Evil Dead comics. Dark Horse did the Evil Dead comic and the Army of Darkness comic. Mark adapted both of those.

Q: Did you have much script input yourself?

Bruce: I did several drafts of my own. As a director, the writer hands you a script and then I have to go around and scout locations and go, ?Okay, it can?t be this. It?s now this,? so you have to adapt it that way, to meet the reality of your budget. It can?t be 80 townspeople; it?s 30 or whatever. And the second pass I did was as an actor. Because I?m Bruce Campbell I know way more inside stuff than anybody. I can put in all those twisted conversations with fans that actually existed verbatim. So there are sequences in the movie that are word-for-word out of fans? mouths that only I know.

Q: You produced and directed the movie as well as starring in it. Did that put a lot more pressure on you?

BC: No, it?s liberating. You don?t have to answer to anybody. If I?m going to make a low budget movie I don?t want to have eight people telling me what to do. I don?t want anyone telling me what to do. I had one person to answer to and that was Mike Richardson who, ironically, loves movies.

Q: He?s the one.

BC: Yeah, I think he?s ?the one? because he doesn?t live in Los Angeles. I?m continually shocked by how much contempt executives have for the motion pictures they make. These are guys with business degrees. They push widgets around all day and a movie is just a widget. ?Let?s get that widget out. Keep that widget cheap.?

Q: Mike?s not like that.

BC: No, the spores haven?t gotten to him yet.

Q: There?s some nice ?stunt casting? in the film.

BC: Yeah, that was important. If you?re going to make a ?fan based? movie you?ve got to throw some bones out there. We made sure that all three Evil Dead movies were represented. Ted Raimi, of course, has been in all of them. Ellen Sandweiss was in the first one and then I got guys from the second and the third, so that was very intentional.

Q: And fun.

BC: Oh yeah, they?re all pals. They?re old friends so it was a chance to come back and work together again in a completely different setup.

Q: Additionally, there are quite a few new faces in the movie.

BC: My leading lady [Grace Thorsen] is local to where I live in Oregon and the lead kid [Taylor Sharpe] was also local. To me that?s the fun of it. Nobody?s ever seen these people before. They?re small town people. The story is about a small town, let?s get small town people. And all the extras in the movie were actors who auditioned and didn?t get a particular part. So I just came back to them and said, ?Hey, you didn?t get a speaking role but would you like to be one of the townspeople?? and they all said, ?Yes.? It was a very organic, fun way to make a movie. I had no actors throwing tantrums on that set. Everyone was happy to be there.

Q: No arguments about trailer size?

BC: No, because there were no trailers. They just went back home.

Q: A lot of the movie is shot on a mini-backlot you had built on your own property. Was that planned early in production?

BC: No, we tried to use our local town. I live right outside a place where the whole town is of national historic interest. It?s a landmark ? the little town of Jacksonville, Oregon. We couldn?t shoot there because they were having a big music festival that summer and that?s their real bread and butter for the town. They were like, ?You can?t shoot here.? So I went, ?All right, the only choice I have is to build it.? I found a rancher, a local rancher whose deed for his property goes back to the actual year that they found gold, 1862. He?s one of these guys who never threw away anything. He?s got every vehicle he ever owned on the property. He?s got a crane from 1940. He had Studebakers, he had 1970s station wagons, every kind of strange thing. He also had the most outrageous building supplies you?ve ever seen. There was old barn wood, real legitimate barn wood that he had collected and stacked. All we had to do was nail it up and it was done. It was all aged perfectly. I also cut some dead trees down on my property and got a local mill in. There?s a portable mill that these guys hook up to the back of a pickup truck. They cut the trees down and made one-by-threes, two-by-fours, one-by-eights. It was a very fun experience because it was very grassroots, very kind of school play.

Q: It must have beneficial in giving you more control than you would have had if you?d been filming on location.

BC: I never had to block a street. I never had a shopkeeper going, ?You gotta get out of here by five o?clock.? There was no traffic situation. There were no police officers. We actually saved money and, because it was private property, if there were any union issues or if they wanted to picket or do anything strange, they couldn?t come on my property. It was a non-union movie.

Q: Do you plan on keeping the backlot?

BC: I can take it down it?s too…

Q: ? and maybe using it again?

BC: No, because it was too much of a pain in the ass. I don?t want people on my property any more. I?m a hermit. It?s a great conversation piece though. My wife and I joke, ?Oh, meet you at the livery stable and we?ll go to the tavern afterwards.?

Q: I watched the ?Making of My Name is Bruce? documentary recently and it looks like everyone is genuinely having a good time, despite the poison oak and the ?killer? bees?

BC: [laughs].

Q: Was it really that much fun to make?

BC: I?m a kind of a bossy director so I don?t know if it was really all that fun. It was as fun as movies can get. If it gets too party-like then no one?s really doing their job. We still had to shoot the movie quickly in a very short period of time, so we had fun but there wasn?t a lot of fooling around.

Q: But even when there were crises on set people seemed to stay calm. They weren?t tearing their hair out.

BC: No, because it?s not a two hundred million dollar movie. If it was I?d have eight people breathing down my neck: ?What happened? We?re losing minutes here.? You have more leeway with a low budget movie in a weird sort of way. You?re not risking that much money.

Q: So you were very much the boss? The buck stopped with you?

BC: Totally. Yeah. And Mike Richardson. He was the ultimate boss but he pretty much left me alone. If I?m going to be making a low budget movie I want to be left alone. I want to have the ability to do whatever and also the ability to say to the accountant, ?Look, I don?t need this money here any more. Put it over here.? If I was just a director they?d go, ?Don?t tell me what to do. I?ll ask the producer what to do.? If you?re the producer you simply tell them what to do. It just makes it easier.

Q: It makes you wonder why all actors don?t do it that way.

BC: [laughs]. I?ve no idea. It?s the greatest secret in the world. [laughs].

Q: Are there any plans for a sequel?

BC: The public will decide that. We have plans for a European version where Bruce is broke again and goes to do a convention over in Europe, presumably in Romania or Bulgaria, some strange place. And the creature in that would be a succubus.

Q: So we wouldn?t see Grace and Taylor coming back for that to play Kelly and Jeff?

BC: Probably not for that, but I would probably recast them as something else. I?d have Grace play some local chick with a funny accent.

Q: Have you seen Jean-Claude Van Damme?s new movie [in which he also plays himself]?

BC: I have not seen JCVD.

Q: What do you think of the timing of the release?

BC: Things happen in cycles. Actors die in groups. They make movies in groups.

Q: There?s a very funny sequence in My Name is Bruce where Bruce meets his fans and is not terribly polite to them. Presumably in real life you often find yourself in situations where you have to take a deep breath and count to ten.

BC: Oh yeah. Every line of dialogue in that sequence was verbatim. It?s all real, including the guy in the wheelchair. He was a real guy that I met at a convention who was easily the rudest person I?ve ever met in my life. In the movie I get to push him in front of a car. In real life you have to smile and nod, wish them well.

Q: So you had your fictional revenge?

BC: Oh, absolutely.

Q: But, generally, you like your fans.

BC: They?re my clients. They put my kids in college. How can you not like fans? As to why actors don?t interact with them, that always leaves me a little confused. They go, ?Oh, fans are creepy. Fans are weird. They?re too obsessed. They?re psycho.? No, they?re shy. Most of my fans are scary looking on the outside, but they?re too shy to even look you in the eye.

Q: It?s interesting that you had Bud Smith edit the movie.

BC: Yeah, Bud and his son, Scott. Scott did most of the editing. Bud was the consultant.

Q: How did that come about?

BC: Mike Richardson had used him for a couple of other projects. I?d actually worked with Bud. He did some editing on Army of Darkness and Darkman, two of Sam [Raimi]?s movies, so I?d known Bud from years before. Mike knew him and I knew him so it made enough sense. Bud cut The Exorcist. He?s a top notch Hollywood editor.

Q: He was Oscar nominated for editing both The Exorcist and Flashdance.

BC: Yeah. So even if you?re doing a dumb, low budget movie you still need good people to work on it. You need professional, proficient people.

Q: Has the success of Burn Notice affected how you pick and choose your projects?

BC: No. TV and features are pretty strange bedfellows.

Q: Is it cutting in to your time, schedule-wise? You?ve had a very prolific career to date.

BC: It is. It?s seven months out of your life every year. Sometimes you can do stuff in between and sometimes you just don?t have time. And sometimes you don?t want to. After working for seven months, that?s like working on a Michael Bay movie. I don?t really want to do anything for at least a couple of months. I want to go and hide under a rock and suck my thumb.

Q; Has it made you a household name yet?

BC: Hopefully not. I don?t want to be a household name.

Q: It is doing very well though isn?t it?

BC: We just beat ? I just in fact got an e-mail yesterday ? we just beat the networks. We?re cable. You?re not supposed to beat the networks. We beat a re-run of E.R. on NBC. Ironically, NBC is our parent company, so we beat our own company. I kind of like that. I?m very gratified for that success because you never know with TV. George Clooney was in 15 pilots before he did E.R. You never know if something is going to take or not. But we go back for season three in March. Back at it.

Q: Can you tell us what happened with Bubba Nosferatu?

BC: Take a guess. Why do you think an actor wouldn?t do a sequel?

Q: Well, that?s sort of why I asked.

BC: I know, but I love to play this game. Just take a wild guess.

Q: You weren?t happy with the script?

BC: Correct. And the script, I have realised over the years, is everything. The script is all you have. A script is the blueprint for your building and if the script is pointing sideways, like this, even with the best director, the best cinematographer, the best actors, your building is still going to look like that. If it?s a funny shape on paper it?s going to be a funny shaped movie.

Q: Was Don [Coscarelli] not willing to bend and allow you to shape the script to your liking?

BC: Well Don ? and I give him credit ? Don is a stubborn son of a gun and that?s what makes him successful as a filmmaker, because he doesn?t want to be deterred by things. We hit a point where the parts in the script that I liked the least were his favourite parts. We just decided, rather than getting into it and getting into each other?s faces and arguing, we just decided to walk away. Because he?s the filmmaker, he can go and make his movie. He?s going to make it with Paul Giamatti and Ron Perlman. It will be sufficiently twisted.

Q: Was Joe Lansdale not involved in the writing?

BC: No, and for me that was the first sign. If that wasn?t the case, I was like, ?Why not? Why wasn?t he?? That?s all I have to say on that.

Q: My Name Is Bruce captures the independent spirit of your earlier films and that seems to be more of an aesthetic thing than a budgetary thing. Do you particularly like that independent feel and spirit?

BC: I do. I don?t like the Hollywood umbilical cord because I don?t want to take notes from a guy who has a business degree. I just don?t. Hollywood is always a horrible collision of art versus commerce. I?m kind of amazed that any good movies come out of that system. If you really think about it, you?ve got guys who are bean counters making movies. Yet, if it was all run by artists the trains wouldn?t run on time. Everyone would be irresponsible and they?d never get anything done. I guess you probably need a little bit of that, but I?ll take as little as possible of that financial oversight because I don?t want to go over budget. I hate the concept of going over budget. I don?t need a guy to tell me to not go over budget and if you empower me with the tools to steal money from one budget category and put it into the other I can be a very good ally, as a producer-director-actor, in making it happen in an efficient, timely manner. It gives us a reverse arrogance. An electrician said this to me one time on a TV show that we were doing. He said, ?We can do what the feature guys can do. We can slow down and spend more money. Can they speed up and spend less money?? And the answer is usually no. I?d like to take Martin Scorsese and ask him to shoot a television show in seven days. Now, he might be able to do it because he comes from Mean Streets? he would grab the camera and shoot it himself, but a lot of filmmakers can?t do it. If you can make a B-movie, you can do anything. That?s my theory.

MY NAME IS BRUCE (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (?19.99) and Blu-ray (?19.99) by Anchor Bay Entertainment on 2nd March 2009. Prior to the DVD release the film will receive a limited theatrical release from 13th February 2009.

Think Bruce Campbell, think Ash from The Evil Dead, You may think Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep, maybe Autolycus from Xena. (Does anyone remember Brisco County Jnr?)
Now hear the name Bruce Cambell, you will be thinking BRUCE CAMBELL as he now stars as himself in My Name Is Bruce

Produced by, directed by and starring Bruce Campbell and written by Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica; Smallville; Timecop; The Mask), MY NAME IS BRUCE sees the B Movie Horror hero doing what he does best ? demon slaying ? in his own inimitable style. It may sound like business as usual for Bruce, but there’s a catch. This time it’s for real!

Bruce Campbell is a womanizing, booze-addled B-movie star, who bears nothing but contempt for his loyal fans. This is of course the character Bruce, not the real one. When reckless teenager and Bruce-obsessive, Jeff Graham (Taylor Sharpe), accidentally awakens the ancient evil spirit and Chinese protector of the dead (and bean curd!), Guan-di, in the small mining town of Gold Lick, Oregon, he can think of only one man capable of preventing the demon from wiping out the town’s entire population. Forced by circumstance to take desperate measures, Jeff takes it upon himself to kidnap his idol and delivers him to the townsfolk of Gold Lick. Believing the whole scenario to be part of birthday prank arranged by his agent (Ted Raimi, in one of three roles), Bruce gamely plays along, not least because he sees it as an opportunity to try out his charms on Jeff’s hot mom while consuming plenty of free liquor. The star’s willingness to play along soon changes, however, when he finally confronts Guan-di and discovers the demon isn’t just some harmless stunt guy in a rubber suit!

Adding to the film’s appeal, both for audiences and himself, in producing it Bruce has surrounded himself with a host of his and Sam Raimi’s longtime friends and associates from their Evil Dead days onwards, including stars Ted Raimi (the Spider-Man trilogy; The Grudge; Army Of Darkness), Ellen Sandweiss (The Evil Dead) and Danny Hicks (Spider-Man 2; Darkman; Maniac Cop; Evil Dead II) and composer Joseph LoDuca (the Evil Dead trilogy; Man With The Screaming Brain).

Undeniably the ultimate Bruce Campbell movie, MY NAME IS BRUCE is a hilarious horror-comedy romp that playfully pokes fun at Campbell’s movie oeuvre to date and is packed with plenty of fan-pleasing farce, slapstick, self-referential in-jokes and some classic Bruce one-liners.

MY NAME IS BRUCE (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (?19.99) and Blu-ray (?19.99) by Anchor Bay Entertainment on 2nd March 2009. Prior to the DVD release the film will receive a limited theatrical release from 13th February 2009.